Abstract

In this paper, I analyse the methods used by Stanley Kubrick, the famous film director and Bert Stern, an American photographer, in creating the first “visible” Lolita, relying on Nabokovʼs 1955 controversial book. The novel tells a provocative story about middle-aged university professor who moves from Europe to America in 1947, where he obsessively falls in love with the twelve-year-old Dolores Haze, with whom, by chance, he begins to travel together through USA, in order to extend the duration of their unacceptable sexual relationship. Adapting the novel in the restrictive conditions of film censorship in the early 1960s, Kubrick considerably changed the original Nabokovʼs story making it less provocative and sexually explicit. In this paper I consider Bert Sternʼs advertising campaign for Lolita as an extension of Kubrickʼs film because, his photography cycle shot in a Sag Harbour hotel, near New York, completes and continues Kubrickʼs project, showing Lolitaʼs diverse faces. Stern, rather than Kubrick, holds a prominent position in defining the so-called Lolita look that has left far-reaching consequences on popular culture in the following decades. In this paper I explore the links between Lolita and her creators, their individual contributions to the reception of Lolita in public, and I determine the role Sue Lyon, a young actress, had in this process considering the fact that she was the first flesh and blood Lolita.

The CC BY SA license permits non-commercial and commercial re-use of an open access article, as long as the author is properly attributed.

Copyright on any research article published by Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology is retained by the author(s).

Authors grant to the Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology the right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media. Copyright and source must be acknowledged and a link must be made to the article's DOI.

WELCOME toTheIssues in Ethnology and Anthropology Journal

We welcome authors, readers, scientists and general public to search our archives and search for articles about ethnological, anthropological, archaeological, folklor, cultural studies and other humanities topics.

Journal Issues in Ethnology & Anthropology was established in 1987. Since 2006, it is coming out as a new series. Since 2011, it has published 4 issues per year.